Women's centers in Frankfurt am Main

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From 1973, in the expanding political practice of the new women's movement, the organizational form of autonomous, grassroots democratic women's centers independent of state funding emerged. The centers founded in many West German cities acted as contact points for interested women who exchanged ideas in working and self-awareness groups on previously taboo topics such as sexuality, pregnancy and childbirth, violence in the family and wages for housework and organized public campaigns.

history

Founding history

The first women's center in Frankfurt was located in this building at Eckenheimer Landstrasse 72.

In Frankfurt am Main, mainly women from the Second Frankfurt Women's Council and the Bornheim Women's Group Revolutionary Struggle (RK) were involved in the thematic expansion and implementation of emancipatory content in their own spaces and fields of action. The women's center, Eckenheimer Landstrasse 72, opened as the second in Germany in September 1973. West Berlin's first women's center in Germany was opened in March 1973.

The idea of ​​founding a women's center in Frankfurt am Main arose in the winter of 1972/73 as part of Aktion 218 ( We have an abortion ! ), A nationwide campaign from 1970 against the current ban on abortion. Following the example of American organizations, the Frankfurt Women's Center was intended to break up the social isolation of women in private surroundings close to their home and serve as a meeting point as well as an information and discussion space. The women's center supported the founding and networking of already existing self-awareness and action groups of women. The program offered legal advice on divorce issues, advice on pregnancy, contraception and abortion, working and action groups (including the “Violence against Women” group), women's literature circles, consciousness-raising and self-examination groups.

Political actions and events of the first Frankfurt women's center

One of the actions was the organization of the first international women's congress on December 5, 1974 in the student house of the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main with around 500 visitors from 18 nations.

Important actions and demonstrations took place with regard to the deletion of Section 218. After the Federal Constitutional Court passed a majority decision on February 25, 1975, ruling the time limit solution as incompatible with the Basic Law, protests by women's groups broke out nationwide. The Frankfurt Women's Center then organized, with a public announcement, from June 1975 trips to Holland to see legal abortion clinics there. The bus trips were carried out on Saturdays for about a year and were accompanied by two women from the women's center.

On July 1, 1975, the Frankfurt public prosecutor's office and the police's homicide squad seized the doctors' files and statistical material during a raid on the women's center in Eckenheimer Landstrasse. On the grounds that abortion addresses were provided, charges were filed against the women's center “for criminal association” and “aiding and abortion”. Files relating to the women's center were also confiscated from the legal representative of the women's center, lawyer Inge Hornischer . An information desk at the women's center in another part of the city was cleared during a police operation on July 10, 1975, where leaflets were used to advertise a demonstration trip to Holland. The trip was intended to show solidarity with the women traveling to Dutch clinics for abortions. On July 12, 1975, the Frankfurt Women's Center organized a protest trip to The Hague to an abortion clinic.

On the initiative of the Frankfurt Women's Center, the Women's Yearbook I was published in December 1975 , Verlag Roter Stern, Frankfurt am Main 1975.

In August 1976, the women's center , the lesbian center and the women's meeting point in Niedenau in Frankfurt am Main organized a night demonstration of violence against lesbians . The reason for the action was the trial of two homosexual women for bodily harm resulting in death. The couple had struggled against a man's repeated intrusions at night. In their leaflet, the initiators of the demonstration demand the women's acquittal: “All men are criminals who threaten women in any way. We do not recognize men's justice whose right is wrong against women. "

In October 1978, the secretaries group of the Eckenheimer Landstrasse women's center organized the office workers congress with around 100 participants from Germany, Austria and France on the subject of resistance in and alternatives to the office.

Further founding of women's centers in Frankfurt

In 1976 the lesbian center at Kiesstrasse 16, the women's bookstore at Kiesstrasse 27, a women's meeting point with a café in an occupied house at Niedenau 51, a women's culture center at Oppenheimer Landstrasse 40, and in 1977 another women's center (Bockenheim) at Landgrafenstrasse 13 and a Women's café at Neuhofstrasse 39.

Closure of women's centers and development of new projects

From 1978/79 the women's centers in Frankfurt am Main, as in other places, entered a new phase of the movement: women's projects specialized and professionalized in and with the establishment of new feminist organizations such as women's health centers , women's emergency call facilities, work with girls, bookshops and publishing houses, cultural and educational institutions and business start-ups.

In 1978 the association Women Help Women opened in Frankfurt . V. the autonomous women's shelter for abused women and their children, the Feminist Women's Health Center (FFGZ) and the nationwide first girls' meeting Gallus . The Frankfurter Frauenblatt appeared with its zero number. In 1979, the mother-child counseling center for the support of women who had emigrated began its work in a model project of the federal government (renamed Infrau Interkulturelle Frauen- und Mädchenarbeit eV in 1984 ). The association for the professional advancement of women e. V. set up an advice center for career planning, re-entry and professional reorientation for women.

Founders and actors of the Frankfurt women's centers

Co-founders were among others Sibylla fledging (second Frankfurt Weiberrat , Women's Center corner Landstrasse), Barbara Rendtorff and Dörthe Jung (Women's Center Bockenheim, Frankfurt School for Women ), Jutta Ebeling (Women's Center Bockenheim) and Lu Haas (1944-1991) (Women's Center Bockenheim, jumpp -Frauenbetriebe e . V.).

literature

Film and photo documents from the 1970s on the new women's movement in Frankfurt

  • Film document That changed me a lot, D 1976 director, book Edith Schmidt-Marcello with Beate Scheunemann, Ulrike Krasberg , Gisela Zehm and others, production WDR , color copy, DVD of 16mm, 47 min, German OV, Edith Schmidt-Marcello The film documents the work of the women’s center Eckenheimer Landstraße in Frankfurt am Main.
  • Abisag Tüllmann , Barbara Klemm and Inge Werth : Photographs on the 68s and the new women's movement. “(...) the story of the new beginnings would certainly have been written differently without the photos of Inge Werth, not to forget those of Barbara Klemm and Abisag Tüllmann. One can say that the documentation of 68 in Frankfurt was in the hands of three photographers. "
    • Exhibition - "Art of Revolt / Revolt of Art". Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt am Main, March 9 to May 5, 2018
    • Exhibition - “Paris, Frankfurt am Main and the 1968 generation. Photographs by Inge Werth ”. Museum Giersch Frankfurt am Main, 8 August to 13 October 2018

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Regine Gildemeister, Katja Hericks (ed.): Sociology of Gender: Theoretical approaches to a tricky category of social (=  text-books of sociology ). Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-58639-8 , p. 152 .
  2. ↑ Kristina Schulz: The long breath of provocation. The women's movement in the Federal Republic and France 1968–1976 (=  history and genders . Volume 40 ). Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 2002, ISBN 3-593-37110-3 , pp. 158–161 ( unibe.ch [PDF]).
  3. ↑ “The Berlin and Frankfurt Women's Centers are the first of many women's centers that women on the move will initiate in the following years. By 1977 almost 60 women's centers will be founded in 38 cities. ”Quoted from: Women as founders: women publishers, magazines, September 1973. In: FMT - FrauenMediaTurm Feminist Archive and Library, https://frauenmediaturm.de/neue-frauenbewegung/ women-centers-emma-courage /
  4. ↑ “We wanted other women to be given the opportunity to join forces. We wanted to speak to women from the part of town we lived in and work with them. We also wanted to help women who needed an abortion. ”Frankfurter Frauen (Ed.): Frauenjahrbuch 1. Verlag Roter Stern, Frankfurt am Main 1975, p. 47
  5. ↑ Sibylla Flügge: From women's council to women's project. A personal report on the beginning of the new women's movement in Frankfurt am Main . In: Kirsten Beuth, Kirsten Plötz (Ed.): What should I explain to you? An exchange about women's stories in two German states . Triga Verlag, Gelnhausen 1998, ISBN 3-931559-95-5 , p. 141-143 .
  6. ↑ Frankfurter Frauen (Ed.): Women's Yearbook 1 . Verlag Roter Stern, Frankfurt am Main 1975, ISBN 3-87877-078-2 , p. 48 f .
  7. ↑ Chronicle of the New Women's Movement: 1973. In: FrauenMediaTurm - Feminist Archive and Library. Retrieved May 12, 2020 .
  8. ^ Stadtchronik 1973. In: Institute for City History Frankfurt am Main. Retrieved May 12, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Women's Department of the City of Frankfurt am Main (ed.): Wirsindso * free. 3 decades of new women's movement in Frankfurt. 58 Frankfurt women’s projects connect yesterday - today - tomorrow. Milestones from the law and history of the Frankfurt women's movement . Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 51 ( frankfurt.de ).
  10. ↑ Sibylla Flügge: From women's council to women's project. A personal report on the beginning of the new women's movement in Frankfurt am Main . In: Kirsten Beuth, Kirsten Plötz (Ed.): What should I explain to you? An exchange about women's stories in two German states . Triga Verlag, Gelnhausen 1998, ISBN 3-931559-95-5 , p. 145 .
  11. ↑ Sibylla Flügge: From women's council to women's project. A personal report on the beginning of the new women's movement in Frankfurt am Main . In: Kirsten Beuth, Kirsten Plötz (Ed.): What should I explain to you? An exchange about women's stories in two German states . Triga Verlag, Gelnhausen 1998, ISBN 3-931559-95-5 , p. 146 .
  12. ↑ Chronicle of the New Women's Movement: 1975. In: FrauenMediaTurm - Feminist Archives and Library. Retrieved May 12, 2020 .
  13. ↑ a b Dörthe Jung: How the women's movement moved Frankfurt. New beginnings and rebellion: The new women's movement in Frankfurt 1968–1990. Lecture at the German Architecture Museum Frankfurt am Main. (PDF) October 4, 2017, accessed on May 12, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Chronicle of the New Women's Movement: 1975, July 1, 1975. In: FrauenMediaTurm - Feminist Archive and Library. Retrieved May 12, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Traude Bährmann, Sibylla Flügge: The lost honor of Inge Hornischer . In: Courage: Berliner Frauenzeitung . tape 2 , no. 4 , 1977, ISSN  0176-1102 , pp. 17 ( fes.de ).
  16. ↑ Chronicle of the New Women's Movement: 1975, July 10, 1975. In: FrauenMediaTurm - Feminist Archives and Library. Retrieved May 12, 2020 .
  17. ^ Stadtchronik 1975. In: Institut für Stadtgeschichte Frankfurt am Main. Retrieved May 12, 2020 .
  18. ↑ Chronicle of the New Women's Movement: 1976, August 27, 1976. In: FrauenMediaTurm - Feminist Archive and Library. Retrieved May 12, 2020 .
  19. ^ Chronicle of the New Women's Movement: 1978. In: FrauenMediaTurm - Feminist Archives and Library. Retrieved May 12, 2020 .
  20. ↑ Women's Department of the City of Frankfurt am Main (ed.): Wirsindso * free. 3 decades of new women's movement in Frankfurt. 58 Frankfurt women’s projects connect yesterday - today - tomorrow. Milestones from the law and history of the Frankfurt women's movement . Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 52 ( frankfurt.de ).
  21. ↑ Sibylla Flügge: From women's council to women's project. A personal report on the beginning of the new women's movement in Frankfurt am Main . In: Kirsten Beuth, Kirsten Plötz (Ed.): What should I explain to you? An exchange about women's stories in two German states . Triga Verlag, Gelnhausen 1998, ISBN 3-931559-95-5 , p. 149 .
  22. ↑ Women's Department of the City of Frankfurt am Main (ed.): Wirsindso * free. 3 decades of new women's movement in Frankfurt. 58 Frankfurt women’s projects connect yesterday - today - tomorrow. Milestones from the law and history of the Frankfurt women's movement . Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 54 ( frankfurt.de ).
  23. ↑ Claus-Jürgen Göpfert: The green Prussian . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . July 4, 2006, p. 28 .
  24. ↑ Remake. Frankfurt Women's Film Days. In: Remake. Frankfurt Women's Film Days. Kinothek Asta Nielsen e. V., accessed on May 12, 2020 .
  25. ^ Exhibition in Frankfurt: Student revolt and women's struggle. Inge Werth documented the wild years. In: www.op-online.de. August 10, 2018, accessed May 13, 2020 .
  26. ↑ There was something else . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . August 15, 2018, p. 30 .

Coordinates: 50 ° 7 ′ 27.1 ″  N , 8 ° 41 ′ 11.8 ″  E